See my previous Film Costume Nerdery post here. When I was a teenager, I loved the Rocky Horror Picture Show. In high school, my friends and I would turn up at the cinema, Saturday night at midnight, sometimes dressed up, sometimes not, sometimes with our rice and water pistols, sometimes not, always ready to dance […]

Film Costume Nerdery 2 is here. Several months ago I started a few projects making outfits or items of clothing that I could wear that were replicas of or inspired by costumes from films. I’ve got one full “inspired by” outfit and three ‘replica’ items I’m working on, from three different films. So far. I […]

The night of the 22nd of May, I’d gone out with some friends in the evening, only had a couple drinks and got home early. I was in bed by 11pm. At just after 5 the next morning, I heard one of our cats jump down from my little son’s bed in his room right […]

Hatshepsut was pharaoh from 1479–1458 BCE during the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt and arguably the first great female ruler in recorded history. Though there were female rulers before Hatshepsut, it isn’t always entirely clear whether some ruled in their own right, whether they acted as co-regent with their father, husband or son or whether […]

This morning I woke up to see yet another woman being attacked with horrendous abuse and rape threats on Twitter. My first reaction was despair. “Not again. Will this never stop?” Before I made myself feel defeated by ignorant morons, I got down on my floor and did some push-ups. I ended up doing 100, […]

Thank you to everyone who voted for Jocelyn Bell Burnell’s discovery of pulsars in the Great British Innovation vote. She came #4. Amazing! Several weeks ago Roger Highfield from the London Science Museum got in touch with me to ask if I’d like to take part in the Great British Innovation vote. He sent me […]

Sidebar

I’ve been going through some of the stuff I wrote for Sunshine. It’s been a while since I visited the site and was surprised and delighted by what I read. I wrote that? Here’s a short one which was pretty cool.

I was talking to Brian last night about my thoughts about ‘truth’. I’ve realised that we most often use or hear the word ‘truth’ when talking about ‘non-facts’. For example, “The Truth About the Moon Landings” is inevitably about some ridiculous conspiracy which ends up talking about UFOs or the Illuminati or both. As Brian […]

“Who knows what the Sun does to people and how they react when they get close to it? The word ‘lunacy’ comes from supposedly having mental illness in reaction to the lunar light. One might come up with ‘solacy’ for the Sun.”- Nick Kanas, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco specialising […]

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Sunshine is on at the Rio Cinema Dalston in London this weekend as part of the Physics On Film festival run by the Institute of Physics (and organised by my friend Sam Rae:). Unfortunately, I’m not going to be in London this weekend otherwise I’d be there. I’d love to see ‘Sunshine’ in the cinema […]

What a great time I’ve had over the past five days! As you will have already known, Phil Plait was over in the UK to visit CERN with us over the weekend. You can read about it on his site and, of course, the podcast he and Brian did will be going live soon, too. […]

So, after redesigning Brian’s site and after redesigning CERNPodcast, I figured I should update my site. I hope it’s working OK for everyone. Please, let me know if it’s not. Tomorrow, Phil Plait arrives in the UK! Weeeeee! He’s coming over to visit CERN with Brian and me. We’re visiting both ATLAS and CMS and […]

OK, well, not quite. Firstly, because I am a foreign national in the UK and can’t vote. Secondly, because I’m a Democrat (American, like), I still equate ‘rightwing’ with ‘neocon’ and it makes me fume and get all angry and want to argue with Bush-loving Fundamentalist Christian Military Housewives. Saying that… Brian and I just […]

My son and I really enjoy beach-combing. We have spent hours at a time on beaches finding stones, shells, old pottery, worn glass… We have several carrier bags full of stuff we’ve found on beaches. One day, we’ll do something with it all. One of our very favourite places to go is the beach along […]

Another post I did for the Sunshine blog. In the beginning, it was hot. Really, really hot. You know how hot the inside of your oven is? Well, that is a relative walk in the park compared to how unfathomably hot it was at the Big Bang. It was so hot that Time, Space, Matter […]